


Just Like Birds of a Feather

by CurlicueCal



Series: Packstuck AU [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Demons, F/M, Family, Gen, M/M, Psychic Wolves, demon!Caliborn, wolf demon!Slick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 13:18:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2271147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurlicueCal/pseuds/CurlicueCal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You straighten the wooden dummy on your shoulder again.  “Can’t I come check up on my baby brother?”</p><p>“Not notably, no.  Just completely non-suspicious hordes of birds spying on me everywhere.  I thought you were joined at the hip with your creepy demon loanshark.  Or the ankle.  Or the dick.”</p><p>Jade smacks Dave's shoulder before reaching up to pet his hair efficiently back into order.  “Be nice.”<br/>--<br/><i>asukaskerian asked: Stray Dogs: Bro meets Slick? :D</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Like Birds of a Feather

Jade spots you first and you shift the puppet on your shoulder, bracing for impact as five-and-a-half feet of pure enthusiasm hits you.  “Bro!”

“Hey there, kiddo.”  You look her over as you set her back onto her feet.  You’re relieved to find her not visibly altered in any way.  You even remember to connect the emotion to something on your face, curving your lips up into a smile for her.  You’re very fond of Jade.

She beams back, big white teeth showing, bouncing in place.  She glances over her shoulder to where Dave is still dramatically frozen in mid-step, his shoulders drawn up around his ears.  “Dave, look, it’s your bro!”

“Yes.  Yes, I noticed that.”  His speech is dead level but his hands start waving in accompaniment.  “Walk into a clearing in the middle of the woods, miles from anywhere, and obviously you are going to be tripping over my bro left and right.  You just flip over a rock and there he’ll be, chilling like the chillest spider that ever sprung out where you weren’t expecting, turning up all over the place. Like: What? Is this your shoe?  This is not a shoe, this is a home for spiders.  In fact all your belongings are spider-homes now.  And they’re made of spiders.  It’s just spiders all the way down.  You can’t escape, there’s no choice but to raze the house to the ground and flee to the hinterlands to live as hermit.”

You have no idea where Dave gets this tendency to theatrics and hyperbole from.  No, really.  Cross your heart.  You amble to a stop in front him and present your best innocent pose, your hands open, your face blank and mild as the purified milk of a thousand virgin doves.  “Hey, li’l man.”

He thins his lips at you.

“Didn’t you get my note?”

Dave slides his sunglasses up into his hair, apparently in order to glare at you more effectively.  “Your note.  Your note.  Do not talk to me about your stupid notes, Bro.  We are going to have _words_ about you and your notes.”

You raise a sardonic eyebrow. 

Dave refuses to be deterred.  “It’s like, what is even up with your shit; do you think there is a word shortage?  Are the world reserves of ink in grave danger of running out?  Gotta do your part, chip in and cut back, help delay the inevitable war with the great watery kingdom of the squiddles, all too soon their tentacly wrath will fall upon we who have wantonly constructed sentences of longer than three words and then _written them down_ , this must be prevented and you are the hero to do it.”

You wait to see if he is done.  Jade grins at you.

“ ‘Woods.  NE 60L.  Sunrise’,” he mimics.

You wait patiently.

“ ‘Bring Jade’,” he adds.

You wait.  He’s done.  Blank-face always wears them down.  “So,” you say, into the pause. “No ‘hi’?”

Dave puffs out his lips, huffing out an exasperated breath and throwing up his hands.  But he’s rolling his eyes a moment later, and you can see the reluctant quirk of his lips as he offers you a dutiful fist.  You bump it in the appropriate brotherly fashion.  Then you drag him into a headlock and affectionately ruffle his hair while he squawks and flails.

Yep.  Slightly more feathers down under that hair where your fingers can discover them.  Same Dave.  Like he’s not fast enough to dodge you if he really wants to these days.

You curve your lips up into a smile for him, too.

“What. the. hell. are you doing here?” Dave says flatly, batting the rest of the way free from the dangling puppet arms that seem intent on entangling him.

You straighten the wooden dummy on your shoulder again.  “Can’t I come check up on my baby brother?”

“Not notably, no.  Just completely non-suspicious hordes of birds spying on me everywhere.  I thought you were joined at the hip with your creepy demon loanshark.  Or the ankle.  Or the dick.”

Jade smacks his shoulder and reaches up to pet his hair efficiently back into order.  “Be nice.”

“Oh, take _his_ side,” Dave mutters, but he tilts his head for her, softening into her hands.  Aww.  They are so squeezably cute they ought to be a pair of plush toys.  You figure Dave would happily go belly up right now if he didn’t have company.

Speaking of company.  A hot prickling on the side of your neck alerts you to a third presence, lingering just in the shadows of the trees.  You don’t let your eyes stray.  Not yet.  You’re a pushy asshole, but even you know when you can creep up on somebody and when you need to let them creep up on you.

Doesn’t mean you don’t shift the puppet to where it can keep a glassy eye on the situation.  You’re not totally naïve.

“We’re holding off on the dick-to-dick bondage for now,” you inform Dave in confiding tones.  “I’m a free soul.  I need at least a handcuffs’ length of personal space.  This stallion can’t be bridled.”

“Ugh,” Dave says.

See, you missed this.  His face right now is priceless.

“So where _is_ Mr. Flutterscales?” Jade asks you.

“He lost a bet,” you say, taking a moment to enjoy the warm glow of smug self-satisfaction. Complacently, you adjust the dangling grip of the puppet over your shoulder.

Dave tracks the movement vaguely—and then his gaze sharpens and focuses, his attention locked on the puppet with dawning surmise.  He takes a step back, automatic, and looks like he might seriously be considering ducking behind Jade.  “Bro.  You did not.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t—didn’t—“ He sputters, and then surrenders into slumped and sardonic apathy all at once.  “Oh, who the hell am I kidding.  You totally did.”

Jade leans forward, eyes wide and interested. "Is he _in_ there?"

You turn your lips up in a smile, even though you know the effect is probably unsettling.  “It’s just temporary,” you say mildly.  “And it makes it easier to travel.  I wanted to meet my new furry in-law.”  Jade blinks and cocks her head.

“No you don’t,” Dave says. “You really, really don’t.  Nobody wants to meet Slick.  Slick just happens to people.  Like a natural disaster.  Or a disease.”

“He bites,” Jade says, not exactly like an apology. “And he doesn’t really like strangers.”

“Anyone,” Dave mutters.

Jade’s bright smile is undaunted.  “But we’re working on it!”

“Bring him out,” Dave adds in an undertone.  “They totally deserve each other.”

Jade swats absently at him and looks to you, her eyebrows raised in question. 

“I think I’ll survive the experience.”

“Okay!”  Jade shrugs and then does—nothing you can see.  Or hear.  But your forest-stalker must pick up something, because the sensation of eyes on your back becomes an actual pair of eyes, glinting electric green from the shadows, and then a rangy, half-grown wolf demon slinks into the light of the clearing.  The black creature still has a puppyish look about it, but with the lengthening limbs denoting the onset of rapid adolescent growth.  Big for a wolf, too, although not for a wolf demon.  He’s halfway to your waist already and you know that’s just the beginning of the sort of size he could theoretically achieve. 

The demon circles wide around you, each step predatory, gold-in-green eyes never leaving you.

You raise an eyebrow in response.

The wolf snarls, a low continuous noise that puts all your nerves on alert.

“Slick!”  Jade grabs him by the scruff and hauls him in closer to her, fingers stroking through black fur.  “Be nice.”  She says it in exactly the same tone she used with Dave, and it seems to be about equally effective.  The snarl cuts short and intent gold eyes flick to her.  The demon’s tail taps once, automatic.  He returns to glowering at you, but his head hunches down below his shoulders and he looks more sulky than actively aggressive.

“Slick, this is Bro,” Jade says.  “Bro, this is Slick.”

“Yo,” you say.

The cub stares at you; flicks eyes toward Dave; stares at you.

Jade nudges him with her knee.  The demon wolf slides around her, avoiding the encouragement.  “You don’t want to at least sniff his fingers?” she asks him, then continues, like part of a conversation.  “Well, I know you can, but he can’t.”

Slick tilts his head, his ears lying briefly flat.  Then he skulks away from her, returning to his suspicious circling.

You let him make his observations, only shifting to keep him under observation himself.  You can respect a well-cultivated sense of paranoia.

“I think that’s the best we’re going to get,” Jade says to you.  She adds brightly, “But he should be just fine as long as you don’t turn your back on him.”

“Yeah, Slick’s a real people person,” Dave intones.  He wiggles his fingers at the passing wolf cub, who snaps easily back at him.  It has the feel of a ritual exchange.  You wonder if Dave realizes that the upward twitch of his mouth shows when he does that.

“Eh,” you say.  “I’m not worried.”  You consider their little group a few minutes longer—and it’s true, you realize; you’re not. 

You’re glad you came.

Some things you need to make sure of for yourself.  In person.

And of course, a little later, when Slick does finally maneuver himself into your blindspot, his lunge for your back skids to a back-pedaling halt before Jade can even open her mouth.  You turn lazily and consider the half-grown wolf demon, stopped nose-to-nose with the blankly grinning face of the puppet, where it sits limbs askew in the dirt in front of him.  The wolf demon seems frozen, somewhere between consternation and fascination.  Gold eyes stare fixedly into glassy blue. 

“Nice try, kiddo.  Don’t think you’re quite demon enough to tackle us just yet.”  You crouch down alongside and pap him lightly right on his furry snout. 

Slick blinks and goes cross-eyed.

You curve your lips up at him and hold his eyes.  “We got ways of watching out for what’s ours.”

Slick blinks at you a moment longer, and you think you can see new thoughts and calculations turning over in the back of those green-ringed demon eyes.  Good.

Some points need to be made in person, too.

“Bro, what the hell kind of black magic are you working over here and who do I have to sell my soul to to get it?”

You look up at Dave and Jade.  “Just making friends.” 

Slick’s gone back to staring down the puppet, eyes sharp and green-hazed gold and almost glowing, like he can see right through to what’s inside.  As much curious as hostile.  Enthralled.

Jade’s eyes are on the puppet, too, her gaze narrowed and her lips pursed.  You wonder she’s picking up from Slick.

“Right, sure,” Dave is saying.  “Because Slick wouldn’t totally be exactly as much of an asshole to his friends as he is to everybody else in the whole world.  That sounds extremely plausible to me; I believe it.”

“I like him,” you say.  “He’s cute.”  He really is.  You’re going to make such a great uncle.  “I take back everything I said about you and Jade being careful while you’re young,” you add, “you two should totally have had puppies earlier.”

Dave makes a face.

“Slick’s more like a brother,” Jade says.   And then she looks past you again and her voice goes very firm and her hands plant on her hips.  “And I think that is enough of that from the both of you.”

You glance to Slick and the puppet, and find them still locked in a staredown.  Slick doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with himself.  The puppet just grins, blue eyes blazing. 

Ah.

You scoop up the wooden figure, slinging it back over your shoulder and arranging the dangling limbs, turning casually to break the line of sight.  That probably is enough.  _Family_ , you think firmly, because Cal does tend to take things to extremes at any opportunity.

You pat the puppet fondly, trace mental fingers over that familiar soul-fire inside. Feel him turn and coil under your touch.  _Be nice._


End file.
